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Huntkillbury Finn
interview 0060 added 21.03.01
words Flat 4
Huntkillbury Finn. There's a name for you. Known for thoughtful lyrics, jazzy, funky, reggae- and dub-(and all sorts of other styles-) influenced beats in the early 90s, he and Katch 22 played a major part in the UK scene for some time, then it all went quiet. After completing his studies, various experiments in sound, style and film, he came back with a great EP on Son Records, and there's more to come…
[UKHH] There was quite a long time out between the last Katch 22 release and the Son EP – what made you want to record again?
Gimme that microphone |
[HKB Finn] Well I mean, my love for music never really died… I only meant to take a year out to explore some other ideas – I always wanted to do film. I started working at university on some stuff and just ended up making documentaries and stuff and next thing I know a year has turned into a couple, and then by the time I'd got round to doing some stuff again it was just much later y'know. Y'know how stuff goes, when you're creative you can go off on these huge tangents, especially when you're doing something that you've never really done before – you haven't explored all the possibilities, all the different avenues. I wanted to get into film, but I hadn't really thought that I could get into like directing and stuff. I was like an assistant director on one project and then they handed me one that no-one else wanted so I took that, it went really well, and I guess all the stuff I picked up in the music – being able to turn an idea into a product - came into play. Cuz you see all the Katch 22 stuff that we did was basically pre-planned. We'd sit down and say we want to do a track like this, a track like that, then we'd go off, find the music, I'd write the lyrics and then we'd come back, work it through and that'd be the track in the bag. So that's how we worked – we had the track on paper first, went off and made it then came back and matched it up. So transferring that over to the visual world was quite easy really – it's the same process. You basically work either from scripts or for documentaries it's more kind of an intellectual schematic where you're trying to follow a certain argument and you just find the fors and againsts and you just pitch it where you want it to go, find the material to support what you want to say. It's dead simple really...
What were you studying – how did you get into the filmmaking to start with?
I was doing a media studies degree, and it was a part of it. So while most of my fellow students were concentrating on y'know doing the theoretical side of it, I concentrated on the practical. While I was studying I was working part-time and then when I finished they employed me full-time. It was cool y'know...
And what kind of things were you directing?
It was basically for the different faculties – boring stuff for the metallurgy department and that crap, but then some interesting stuff for sociology. The best stuff I did was for a department called the Department of New Ethnicities, and it was looking at the changing face of race. Race used to be about biology – if you had certain physical characteristics you'd be classed in a certain way, ie European or I dunno, a Scottish tribe or a French tribe or whatever, but basically the whole thing was like that this concept is being eroded. You've got people who look a particular way, and should belong to one cultural group, but because of their cultural choices they can't really be classed as that, so we were looking at that whole gray area, looking at it all from a new perspective. It was mad exciting man. So we did a couple of films round that, looking at youth culture, looking at young people and how they define themselves. People in East London in particular who didn't see themselves as black or white or Asian just as like 'I'm from Dagenham' or New Cross or whatever – kind of like a local tribalism going on. In a way it's in the way some of them wore their hair, the clothes they wore, the music they listen to, their view on life, how they deal with the world at large – if you didn't see them from close up, you just hear the way they speak and see them from a distance you'd think 'there goes a so-and-so', 'there goes a blah-blah'. In simple terms it's young white kids who seem like young black kids, young black kids who seem like white kids, Asian boys who seem like whites – not just blokes either, girls too. It's just all of that. So yeah I think the whole time I was there, the new ethnicities stuff was the best thing I came into contact with there. I actually felt like I was dealing with something, I'm on the frontline.
...My whole shit is about evolution, trying new stuff, being on the next tip man. I'm growing with the audience y'see, for people who're into hip-hop and that but can listen to some other vibes and enjoy that ...
What was the last film you saw that really struck you?
Last film I saw… that was… er… Little Vampire, believe it or not. I took some family and friends to see it. But the last grown up movie I went to see was… I was going to see Pitch Black the other day but I missed out… ah what was it… aw it was rubbish – it was Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer – kind of like a Hitchcockian mix but terrible. Before that I saw Scary Movie which was really funny, and before that I saw an advance preview of that 'Romeo Must Die' which I thought was pants. It was really woody man… I've seen better action movies, better thrillers, better dramas… you could virtually see the strings holding Jet Lee up. The action sequences are really slow and the dramatic sequences are really kinda laboured, man. On my hit list is Rage, Pitch Black, and that new film by the guy who wrote The Usual Suspects which is supposed to be bad man, properly amazing.
Have you got a favourite film of all time?
Well… I think it'd have to be… I'm not even sure of the name – they've changed the name see. In 1932 it was called 'Shangri La', but it's now called 'Lost Horizon' I think. It's an old time movie y'know. For modern movies I'd have to say 'Fifth Element'… for me it's got everything man. But of all time I'd have to say Lost Horizon. It's basically about these people who… a plane load of world weary adventures, gamblers, pickpockets – just a loose bunch of people – flying from one end of Eastern Asia to the other end, over the Himalayas. The plane crashes and most of them die, but the survivors they stumble across this like mountain paradise where everything's pucca – people live like y'know into their hundreds, there's no illnesses n all that, but you can't leave. But this one guy he escapes, tries to tell the world about this place, but the people think he's mad and just ignore him. So the guy goes back and manages to find the place, virtually dies, but manages to get back in. But the people in the city they're like really enlightened n stuff. A close second would be a Japanese film called 'Yojimbo', by Akira Kurosawa. Basically, 'Last Man Standing' with Bruce Willis is a total rip-off of Yojimbo, so is 'A Fistful of Dollars'. It's black and white – it dates from 1961 – and it's a bad film… wicked action… pucca.
  
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